


always be this close

by Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Happy Ending, One Shot, Romantic Fluff, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:48:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27342241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome/pseuds/Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome
Summary: Leia, tired from a long week of political duties, finds comfort in the smallest gestures from the man she loves.---absolutely pure romantic fluff for Boba/Leia---
Relationships: Boba Fett/Leia Organa
Comments: 6
Kudos: 37





	always be this close

Another political meeting finished, Leia thinks, and this time, there hadn’t even been a single assassination attempt. Perhaps her luck is improving, finally, after years and years of bad luck, ever since Hoth, or perhaps her enemies are simply getting smarter. She shivers at the thought of the second, pushing any hope of the first away. As long as she is here, serving as the official face of the New Republic, she must not allow herself to hope for something as simple as her safety, not when she fights for something as grand as galactic peace. 

“Senator,” one of her aides announces, “your escort ship is ready.”

“Thank you, Muilin.” Leia nods to the Rhodian, before turning her gaze toward the landing dock. There’s a glimmer of silver, a roar of engines. The pageantry of a Republic ship landing is the same on every planet, though she is glad for it, rather than the frantic boardings she’s had just as often, where the ramp is deployed in a battlefield and instead of dodging more offers of political gifts, she’s tasked with dodging blaster fire.

But there’s no blaster fire today, no threat of anything at all, except perhaps the risk of her yawning and ruining the solemn moment. It doesn’t matter. Soon she’ll be aboard, and she will be safe enough to rest. Soon, she thinks, she’ll be able to see her lover again, and that all it takes to keep her awake now.

“Your grace?” the other aide asks. Leia knows their names, of course, as well as their home worlds, their career goals, and their favorite colors, but right now, she cannot recall any of that at all. The week has been lo “Are you departing?”

Indeed. Her thoughts had already left, in fact, chasing down all the pleasant daydreams of how she’d spend the return trip. “I am.” A smile appears on her face. Not the usual one she wears when she is doing diplomatic missions such as this one, but one that is true, genuine, real.

It has taken many fake smiles and barely held-back barbs to fight for peace on these former Imperial planets. It has taken countless words and speeches and legal documents. It has taken, Leia thinks, as she hefts her bag, part of herself. But now that the work is done, and his ship is here, nothing else seems to matter as much.

Well, not _his_ ship, so to speak. Even if Boba owns the standard Kuat luxury shuttle outright, rather than lease it as so many other politicians do, Leia knows the ship he would call his is far more deadly, and far less comfortable to fly in. In some ways, she thinks, that sums him up as well. Even if he wears gleaming durasteel armor now, and sports a fake name to match the false life he leads, he is still made of that battered, tougher Mandalorian armor she’d seen him wear, a lifetime ago.

She can still see it, sometimes, the way he’d looked when he’d opened her prison cell on the Death Star, and the way he’d sounded, annoyed at having been stuck with the task, and then, when she’d attempted to kick him in the head, amused at her fighting spirit. Back then, his armor had been as rough as his edges. Now, those rough edges were filed down, at least slightly, tamed by kisses and touches, at least, most of the time.

When there was trouble, he went right back to the fearsome bounty hunter he’d always been, and Leia loves him for that. She hurries toward the ship, her dress and cape crackling in the wind behind her. He offers her a gloved hand, but nothing else, not even a word.

She doesn’t need them. She’s spent a lifetime hearing flattery for her beauty, and now, with her beauty perhaps faded, after years of fighting battles both with blasters and with words, she is all the more glad he wastes no time on idle compliments. “Thank you,” she tells him as she steps into the ship and the door shuts behind them both. 

“No complications on your trip then?” he asks, his voice only slightly muffled by his helmet.

“None.” Leia stretches, before crossing the small foyer into the little cubby-like area that is her bedroom aboard the ship. The electro-kettle is already hot, and the box of tea is set out, at a direct right angle to her mug. She notices, too, that her favorite mutharti blossom tea stash has been replenished, despite being both rare and rather costly.

And she notices with a smile that, likewise, Boba now sports a new belt holster, the one she’d left for him when she’d noticed how worn-out his old one had become. So many things they did for each other passed by without words, neither of them needing to say what their actions showed.

“Straight to Coruscant then?”

“I suppose,” Leia yawns, sitting down. She tugs off one impractical shoe, then the next, before sliding both into comfortable soft boots. “Unless you have something else in mind.”

He shrugs. “Not at the moment.” Just as he’s about to head into the cockpit, he says, quietly, “This ship is too damn big without you.”

That makes her smile, and though she busies herself with her tea, there’s a little giggle that still escapes. He won’t say it, but she knows he means that he missed her. “I, personally, “ she calls back, “found my bed a little too large without you, as well.”

There’s nothing but the faintest exhale, but Leia knows it’s a laugh, or at least as much of one as she’s ever managed to coax from him. She leans back, tea cup in hand, relaxing as the shuttle leaps into hyperspace. It’s the first time she’s rested, if she’s honest with herself, since arriving on this planet. Because as much as she told him the bed was too large to tease, what she meant was that she couldn’t sleep soundly, not with the ever-present danger of the shadows of the Empire, and not without him standing guard at her doorway.

Because Boba Fett didn’t sleep. Not at least the way most people would. A few naps here and there. The occasional post-coital slumber, but never anything that seemed serene, nor restful. Once, he’d been feverish, and while he’d slept, aided by medicines she insisted he take, he called out for a father she’d never known he had, and hummed lullabies that broke her heart to know. But aside from that long week, his rests were never long. 

He told her once that he rested best knowing she was safe, and Leia thought that he might have actually meant it, given how rarely romantic things like that ever left his lips. For her part, she knew she slept better when he was there, but slept best of all the nights he lay next to her, pretending for a little while they were simply two lovers in a normal universe, and not the two they were: a princess tasked with rebuilding a broken galaxy and a bounty hunter who seemed to consider this last job one he’d have for the rest of his life. 

Leia pulls the blanket around her, the tea finished and her tired body slowly winning out against her busy brain. A few moments later, she reaches out to flick off the small holo-light above her bed. A moment later, she hears bootsteps, soft, so soft that had she not learned to listen to them, she may have missed them completely. 

He sits on the edge of her bed. His silhouette shows he’s set his helmet aside, for perhaps just these few moments today. This, like the tea, is a gift. She puts a hand on his knee, knowing just where to find the small warm place between two pieces of armor. The smallest bit of warmth around otherwise ice-cold metal.

“Rest,” he says. “We’ve got at least three standard hours before landfall.”

“Any trouble ahead?”

He shrugs, something she can better hear than see in the dark. “Coruscant has seemed quiet.”

Neither of them call the planet home, though they have lived there for two years now. His home is one of solitude, found only in the depths of space, and hers is long gone, no more than an asteroid field now. “No new threats from the so-called First Order?”

“None that matter.” He leans over and kisses her. She reaches up, her hand ruffling through his cropped hair, finding all the comfort she has longed for all week. 

“Thank you,” she says, as he kisses her a second time, then pulls her blanket around him. She considers asking for one more kiss, or perhaps enticing him to stay here longer, to share more than just a kiss… but she is tired, and her bed is warm, and she is safe.

That last thing, she knows, is the rarest of all. 

“Rest as long as you need to.” It’s a surprisingly gentle thing for him to say, but one that he’s always told her, ever since the first time she trusted him enough to sleep in his bed. It’s a promise, she thinks, that she will be safe, and one that he’s never shown a sign of breaking. 

“Good night,” she replies, though night isn’t exactly a term one uses on a ship. Still, she finds comfort in the saying. That’s where their love is strongest, in the smallest margins of their lives. In a hundred tiny gestures, and all the stolen moments they can find. Though he doesn't sleep, not well at least, it’s never stopped her from hoping for the day he might. Perhaps after the First Order is beaten. Perhaps after the last war, after the last battle, the princess and the bounty hunter could find a quiet planet to retire to.

Until then… Leia tells him good night in a thousand ways. She whispers it to him and calls to him and kisses him when words won’t do.

He never tells her the same thing. He never falls asleep before her. Truly, he only remains in the bed long enough for her to drift off, before he slips away, back to his captain’s chair where she knows he feels far safer, even in this ship he’s compared to a floating pillow fortress, for all the military power it has. 

But this time, when she says it, he replies, “Sleep well, little flame.” The words seem to tumble from him, because at the end, he clears his throat, as if trying to take them back.

But Leia reaches out her hand, catching his gloved one before he can leave. There’s little warmth there, but she knows the hand it hides nearly as well as her own. She’s cataloged every scar, memorized each fingerprint. He told her once that he hated them, the small whorls that should be unique to only him, and yet, were shared with tens of thousands throughout the galaxy. She'd told him then, and means it even now, that he is entirely unique. If DNA made one's destiny, then she was more damned than him. And he'd promised her, in that soft, nearly silent way of his, that if he was entirely his own man, than she was entirely made of light, without a trace of the dark legacy she still had nightmares about. Perhaps others might find it strange that a man with so much blood on his hands could sooth a woman so pure of conviction as Leia, but she knew otherwise. They were both broken in similar ways, both marked by the losses they'd known and the fights they hadn't been able to win. And yet, both of them refused to see the galaxy as any less than theirs, any less than a place they could shape through the force of their very will. Boba, she knew, would take on any power in the galaxy to keep himself alive, or, more shocking yet, to keep her safe. And Leia? She'd fight any battle for the sake of the New Republic, but would fight the darkness within her thoughts daily, if it meant it would help lead Boba down a better path. There is good in him. She'd hoped it the day he'd rescued her, and had been proven correct when he'd stayed to fight for the Rebellion. All that good needed, all any good needed to shine was that first spark. If her conviction had to be his tinder, she'd burn until there was nothing left. 

"Wait," she says, something far more rare for either of them to hear than even the words I and Love and You. Though the time they’ve had together has always been stolen from more important missions, they’ve made the most of it, finding ways to treasure minutes the ways others rest in the luxury of an entire week. 

“That…” she says softly. “That’s from a song.”

There’s a long, long silence, as if he’s returned to his old habit of debating if she’s worth the Imperial bounty on her head. But the silence doesn’t last forever, though Leia, her heart thudding hard, feels as if it does. “So it is.”

“Will you…” she pauses, reminding herself that this is the man, flaws and all, she loves. “Will you say the rest?”

“No,” he replies, so quickly it seems like a gate he has to close, to keep anything else from being said.

“Ah.” Leia lets him go. Loving Boba meant learning the dance of distance and closeness that only orbiting stars had perfected. “No matter. Good night,” she says again.

He sits there a long time. Long enough for Leia to fall asleep, and longer still to ensure she rests well. Only then does he whisper the rest of the song softly, as softly as his father had once sang it to him. It’s a tradition he’s kept up for years now, as long as he’s loved her. But one he’d meant to always keep secret, though he’d failed that tonight. Perhaps she wouldn’t remember, Boba rationalizes. Or perhaps she might forget.

Neither of those traits, though, are the sort of things Leia does naturally, nor would he love her as much if she was a woman easily swayed. So, with a small smile on his lips, he whispers the words once more. “Good night. Sleep well little flame. May you burn brighter when you wake.”

**Author's Note:**

> I find myself coming back to this ship when the world is at its most stressful, and I hope this little fic brings you joy as well. Comments welcome.  
> (And yes, I happen to think Lover might just be the perfect Boba/Leia song)


End file.
